9 September 2008

Crace is going live in May 09.

| johnboy
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Mr Stanhope has announced that the charmlessly named “Crace” is going to start going under the hammer any day now.

Eventually 1,430 blocks will be taken up but the first release will be 160 blocks ranging from 450 to 760 square meters will be available.

Real estate speculators rejoice, 15% of them will go for under $300,000 as part of the “Affordable Housing Action Plan”.

This might all sound rather immediate, but the last para, as is so often the case, tells the real story.

    “The Crace Demonstration Village and sales information office are due to be opened in May 2009 along with the first stage sales release.

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The whole ‘changes everything’ freaks me out – just a tad extreme for a planned community.

I dreamed this up while wandering around it:

http://wp.me/pVWmO-1

A work mate was going to go for a block, but pulled out this week due to a problem with the contracts. He said there was no “sunset clause”, which is like a build by date.

Because of that, the lender that was going to finance his deposit pulled out. This affected enough people to prompt the people running the release to reduce the %deposit required to just 5%, which halves the funds available for the initial building work, which was also a concern for my workmate.

Hopefully the whole thing will turn out ok, people are going to start queuing towards the end of this week for a chance to own the block they want.

Holden Caulfield12:08 pm 19 Mar 09

Growling Ferret said :

Crace is a good location if you can avoid the highway road noise.

Absolutely it could be quite a good place to live. Close to Gungahlin Town Centre, not all that far from Belconnen or Civic and very easy access to Sydney and Melbourne. If I wanted to buy a new home I’d be looking there for sure.

The Weston-Creek-is-the-centre-of-Canberra snobs need not apply, haha.

It disturbs me greatly that people want to by massive houses on tiny blocks.

I just bought a house on a 1200m^2 block. Plenty of room for trees and not too much more then 300k.

They are selling Crace on the premise that it’s so much closer to the city – so much closer than where?

Considering it’ll take two hours to get out of the roundabout at the entrance to the suburb (which already takes an hour to get through without the suburb even in existence yet), I think they must mean it’s closer than Yass. Or Sydney.

They build these large houses, no trees or decent gardens, they depend on air conditioners to keep them habitable, how can this be excusable?

On my rare forays near Gunghalin, it seems like some kind of hell. Is this what people really like?

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy9:16 am 19 Mar 09

It’s interesting that on a $ per square metre basis this land seems similarly priced to much more central blocks (although you need to bear the cost of of crappy old house that’s on the older block).

Still, it’s interesting to see what continued urban sprawl does to inner city property prices.

yeah , worst.suburb.ever to live in

the blocks are about 140m2 !!

first homes have been released this week and it has been revealed that over 90 homes have been purchased by Community Housing Canberra. Good luck neighbours?

Look, it is not like me to whinge about signs, but fair dinkum, this is ridiculous: new signs have been erected in Gundaroo Drive for the new Crace turnoff – and two of them say Gundaroo Road and two of them say Gundaroo Drive!

Of course, originally, Gundaroo Drive was called Gundaroo Road, but this was changed about four years ago.

Surely the people erecting these signs – within a few metres of each other – must have noticed the spelling discrepancies!? Doesn’t anyone in TAMS have the job of proof reading signs before (or after) they are erected?

Future ghetto.

Reference the name Crace,

The suburb of Mitchell was first called Crace under the Whitlam Labour Government.

When Malcolm Fraser came to power the name was changed to Mitchell.

From Canberrahistory.org.au:

Edward Kendall Crace took control of ‘Gungahlin’ and eventually bought it and Davis’s Ginninderra estate. Crace added a substantial new wing to the building in 1882 and in subsequent years added a number of outbuildings, including staff quarters in 1888. Crace developed the ‘Gungahlin’ property and bred merino sheep and Devon cattle.

tylersmayhem12:17 pm 10 Sep 08

Very good point 2604. To back up your point further, just drive down Anthony Rolf in Gungahlin for a perfect example. Most of the roofs only have about 20cm of space between them!

Gungahlin Al11:51 am 10 Sep 08

Indeed so much of it comes down to the selection of the rooms you *need* as opposed to believe the *market* demands.
Reining that in results in yard preserved.

Block size isn’t so much the issue in the newer suburbs, as plot ratio (ie the proportion of the block taken up by a dwelling’s “footprint”). Ratios of 40-50 per cent plus don’t allow for any meaningful planting of shading trees, leaving houses completely exposed to the full summer sun. They also encourage people to build bigger and more energy hungry housing, with much space devoted to areas (three living areas plus an outdoors area, four bathrooms, etc) that are seldom used but need to be heated and cooled all the same. A properly designed dwelling gives everyone enough space without having to be huge.

I would be happy living in a neighbourhood full of 450 square metre blocks if the plot ratio was capped at 25-30 per cent, forcing houses upwards instead of outwards and enabling people to establish some greenery.

I don’t really want to live in a suburb named after this guy. He was “almost” in a battle….

http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A130580b.htm

stonedwookie7:18 pm 09 Sep 08

LOL

A musical bent?

^^ By which I mean ‘hammond’ organs, before you go getting the wrong idea…

stonedwookie said :

you cant live in me thats where i keep my organs

Organs?! So YOU’RE the one keeping the young kids from congregating in the carparks and shopping malls.

Ewok will just have to do, then.

stonedwookie6:56 pm 09 Sep 08

you cant live in me thats where i keep my organs

Granny said :

I want to live in Wookie.

: )

If the leafy boutique suburb of Ewok is available I will be first in.

tylersmayhem4:44 pm 09 Sep 08

I wish the UV on my property would stop going up! I really don’t believe it adds that much value to the sale – and it certainly suck having to pay a 22% increase in rates this year!

tylersmayhem said :

tyler: that’s $300K for house and land – not just the block.

Gee, thank God for that.

especially when my UV value on my block is now $205k…. bought it at $67k, house attached for $145k total. and I could split it into 2 blocks and still be bigger than the ones in crace… discraceful.

tylersmayhem4:16 pm 09 Sep 08

tyler: that’s $300K for house and land – not just the block.

Gee, thank God for that.

Growling Ferret4:09 pm 09 Sep 08

Skid

It could be worse – Its 15 minutes closer to the GDE traffic jam than Amaroo.

Crace is a good location if you can avoid the highway road noise.

Can we just call it “Hell without the elderly”?

As a not-yet-entering-the-buying-market person, if its empty land going for $666/m^2, why are people paying so much more in Crace than elsewhere?
Forde had blocks with houses changing hands at $415/m^2 in March.

Paying $300k for a small block, half the size but twice as far from Civic (As where i used to live), to live in a still developing cookie-cutter society seems like a soccer-mum version of Stepford Hell.

Gungahlin Al3:44 pm 09 Sep 08

tyler: that’s $300K for house and land – not just the block.

Gungahlin Al3:15 pm 09 Sep 08

You can check out the overall Crace subdivision concept plan on the GCC website.

Without getting into block sizes (a sore point in Gungahlin be assured), you can see that the concept plan is a vast improvement over the original ACTPLA plan – particularly from a passive solar design perspective.

I had a quite good yard size on a 550 block in the inner north.

But the house was small, and close to the front of the block, and it was a duplex, so no land wasted on one side. Also no garage so minimal land wasted for driveway etc. And the house was small, so nothing like gungahlin real estate.

But perhaps they should consider duplexes. Better to be connected on one side and have decent gap between properties on the other than to have a scant metre on either side and be looking into everyone else’s loungeroom windows.

tylersmayhem3:02 pm 09 Sep 08

Hang on, let me get this right…$300K for a 450 square meter block = affordable. Just when I though housing prices in Canberra couldn’t get any more ridiculous!

I’m pretty sure our block is smaller than that, and it is the largest on our street.

Loquaciousness2:48 pm 09 Sep 08

Jazz said :

450 m2. that seems like a very small block to me. Can you even fit a house on that and still get inside the building envelope?

Nope. All access to the properties will be through the neighbouring windows.

Just make sure you pick neighbours who won’t ask you to wash up on the way through … 😛

L

450 m2. that seems like a very small block to me. Can you even fit a house on that and still get inside the building envelope?

I want to live in Wookie.

: )

After suburbs named Harrison & Forde, I was expecting maybe one of the new ones might be “Indiana” or “Solo”

What a crass name for a suburb.

Cood cracious!!

*smirk*

Crace is the new Offal.

Hingo, you’ve got a good point there – the Crace exchange in Mitchell is massively overloaded. It was originally designed for Mitchell, and now struggles with all of Gungahlin. But Telstra refused to upgrade the exchange because why spend money on infrastructure when you need to inflate your bottom line for share floats?
The Watson development area suffers the same problems – too far from the exchange (Civic) to get any decent broadband connection.

The dis-crace-ful telephone exchange that keeps me from getting broadband. Yes, thats right Mr Standope.

I cracefully smirk at your post.

You’re a dis-crace.

I’m opening a book on when any of our local publications trot out a ‘Crace under fire’ or ‘Crace under pressure’ headline, possibly on the flimsiest of pretences. ‘Amazing Crace’. Or if there’s a waterway therein, ‘By the Crace of Cod’.

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